The present invention relates to the field of computer aided design (CAD). More specifically, the present invention relates to computer assistance to a designer working with features of a sheet body of a mechanical design.
Mechanical designs can require the creation of a solid geometry piece in the form of a sheet body. An example of a sheet body is a thin piece of solid geometry that can have bends such as a design of a sheet-metal body for stamping. Most sheet bodies require features to be incorporated as part of the sheet body. An example of a feature incorporated into a sheet body is a cutout such as a slot. Yet, another example are holes for fasteners drilled into the sheet body during the manufacturing process. Not all features remove material, some add material instead. An example of a feature that adds material is a pad on the sheet body for attachment purposes. For the purposes of this application, hole, cutouts, etc. will be generically referred to as features. Additionally, for the purposes of this application, sheet bodies such as metal, plastic, wood, etc. will be generically referred to as sheet bodies.
Generally, only limited support are provided by conventional mechanical design software on feature creation on sheet bodies. Typically, the support is limited to a method involving straightening any existing bends in the sheet body, creating a feature in the straightened sheet body, performing a solid operation, and re-bending the sheet body to the original shape. Thus, extensive manipulation of the sheet body is required for incorporation of features. Additionally, once the feature is incorporated into the sheet body, editing the feature or the sheet body while maintaining the desired relationships between the two is very difficult, at times, requiring re-creation of one or the other. Thus, a more user friendly approach for incorporating and editing features in a sheet body is desired. As will be discussed in more detail below, the present invention achieves these and other desirable objectives, which will be apparent from the disclosure to follow.
Computer instructions that operate to project a first three dimensional geometry piece of a mechanical design onto a two dimensional plane forming a projected geometry piece, build a two dimensional feature on the projected geometry piece are disclosed, and build a relationship between the two dimensional feature and the projected geometry piece. Once the relationship is built, the instructions operate to convert the two dimensional feature into a three dimensional feature and incorporate the three dimensional feature including the relationship with the first three dimensional geometry piece to form a second three dimensional geometry piece with the incorporated feature. In one embodiment, the computer instructions are part of a mechanical design software application. In one embodiment, the mechanical software application including the computer instructions are embodied in distribution storage medium.